Beatles: A Day In The Life Meaning

Song Released: 1967

A Day In The Life Lyrics

I read the news today oh, boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph

He blew his mind out in a car
He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of...

1. anonymous

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   Apr 8th 2006 !⃝

   This was actually two seperate songs to begin with, and where you hear the "alarm clock" going off, it is actually the studio timer for John's part, then Paul's starts with the "Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head..."
2. unlabled_00

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   Apr 8th 2006 !⃝

   I thought it was great how Paul McCartney was able to write a song about newspaper articles. Look to the above interpretations to see what those were about, they were covered quite well.
   
   About the swelling orchestra: Many of you might not know this, but this is actually a co-written piece. This is hard to tell because all of the lyrics and the majority of the music is Paul's. Lennon was p****d off at Paul at the time and so when they wrote the song, in his parts he just had an orchestra start from the lowest note and go to its highest note.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
3. anonymous

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   Mar 22nd 2006 !⃝

   4000 holes were the graves of murdered children, they're rather small.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
4. anonymous

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   Mar 16th 2006 !⃝

   The beginning was based on two stories John Lennon read in the Daily Mail newspaper: Guinness heir Tara Browne dying when he smashed his lotus into a parked van, and an article in the UK Daily Express in early 1967 which told of how the Blackburn Roads Surveyor had counted 4000 holes in the roads of Blackburn and commented that the volume of material needed to fill them in was enough to fill the Albert Hall. Lennon took some liberties with the Tara Browne story - he changed it so he "Blew his mind out in the car."
5. CroftD1

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   Mar 14th 2006 !⃝

   I'm sure someone is going to mention the VERY end eventually, I am just glad it is ME! Any ways the final cord hits and trails out foorr aaaa looooonnngg tiiimmmee. Then a high pitched note is played what George Martin described as something to annoy your dog. Then there is a bunch of jibberish, which if you play back words says "I want to 'UCK you like Super Man" repeated over and over. Not F@ck but 'uck. Of course EVERTHING is a hidden message, but this one is real ,I tried it and it really says that whether some people like it or not.
   
   And by the way my mom grew up in the 60's. No I'm not one of those 'Every thing the Beatles did was drugs' people. But 'blowing your mind out' is to take a hit of acid whether he meant it as a reference or not, it really doesn't matter to me because it's not the point of the song.
6. anonymous

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   Mar 12th 2006 !⃝

   First of all this song isn't about fucking drugs it's about articles that caught Lennon's attention. The Beatles weren't all about drugs.
7. anonymous

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   Feb 28th 2006 !⃝

   The "he blew his mind out" bit is another drug refrence and not literal.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
8. Adub

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   Feb 2nd 2006 !⃝

   A day in the life
   
   Here's a little help for the crescendo/decrescendo section - If you listen very closely at the beginning of the counting you can here a voice counting the measured musical time. This time was originally just empty space. Needing it filled, the band decided on the rise and fall of orchestral sound.
9. inpeace

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   Nov 27th 2005 !⃝

   Well, this may be shocking if you've never heard the theory of Paul McCartney's death. If you haven't, look up "I buried paul" on the web and you'll find a lot of info on the subject but the song a day in the life adds to it it is about the fatal crash that supposedly killed Paul mcartney a whole segment tells about the crash if you read the lyrics:
   
   "He blew his mind out in a car
   He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
   A crowd of people stood and stared
   They’d seen his face before,
   Nobody was really sure if he was from the house of lords."
10. anonymous

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    Nov 22nd 2005 !⃝

    "I'd love to turn you on" was a reference to drug use. In fact, it was the first time any major band had said such a direct remark and it was banned from the BBC radio.
    
    The section in the middle of the song was a lyric Paul was working on but it was going nowhere. They found it to fit nicely where John was struggling to join the two verse sections together.
11. anonymous

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    Oct 17th 2005 !⃝

    When John Lennon wrote this song, he was reading the newspaper, and basically just wrote about the articles that caught his attention. The part in between the orchestra swells, however, I'm not sure about. But I would assume that was his day up until that point.

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